WEST PALM BEACH — Assistant State Attorney Ashley Ackerman told the jury there were two words that were said over and over again throughout the trial of Nick Cirio: patient brokering. And, she said, they still may not know exactly what that means or still may be digesting the large amount of evidence, but she wanted to be clear on why they sat through three days of testimony this week...

Efforts to rein in sober home industry abuses are finally paying dividends. A 42 percent dropin the number of fatal opioid overdoses in Palm Beach County alone is a testament to that fact.

But that progress is threatened by a ruling last week by Circuit Judge Laura Johnson that makes it almost impossible for prosecutors to go after unscrupulous drug treatment center operators and help save the lives of troubled patients...

Willie Weatherley will ask that question long after the heartbreak of her loss subsides.

She will wonder why she survived her opioid addiction while her sister Jessica did not.

When last seen by The News-Press in December, Jessica Weatherley had made it into detox after a frustrated first attempt.

Lacking money or insurance, the young Fort Myers mother next went to a sober home on Florida’s east coast where, far from the influence of using friends, Willie hoped she might stay on the recovery path...

Almost three years after Palm Beach County officials set out to combat the opioid epidemic, it looks like their efforts are paying off: The State Attorney’s Office reports there were 326 opioid deaths in 2018, down from 558 in 2017. That’s a 41 percent decline...

"The city and Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg, who also was invited to serve on Moody’s task force, found ways to force out disreputable sober homes and lessen the impact of the national epidemic."

Vermont's growing sober house industry is largely unregulated. A local nonprofit is aiming to change that by this summer. But currently, without oversight, there is no state assurances that these homes are safe for residents. A sober house, or a recovery residence, is a group drug-free home for people in recovery from addiction. Many people find support in these places. But around the country, unscrupulous sober house owners have taken advantage of people struggling with addiction, exploiting residents and, in some cases, leading them into relapse or overdose...

Next year at this time, the number of overdose deaths in Jacksonville should have declined significantly. Project Save Lives should have moved from a pilot program to a permanent part of the city government with its own dedicated revenue source, supplemented by funds from a nationwide suit filed by the city and others against the opioid pill manufacturers...

When the Justice Department in 2007 settled its criminal case against the maker of OxyContin, a high-powered painkiller, federal officials claimed a “victory” that would deter other companies from illegally marketing opioids...

The Palm Beach County Sober Homes Task Force said it’s the first arrests of these kind it has seen.

WEST PALM BEACH — A pharmacist and a “middleman” conspired to split thousands of dollars in insurance reimbursements from fraudulent prescriptions with an undercover police officer pretending to own a drug-treatment center, authorities said in announcing their arrests...

China has agreed to reclassify fentanyl as a "controlled substance," in what the White House is calling a "wonderful humanitarian gesture" after the much-anticipated talks Saturday between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Buenos Aires, Argentina...

How can advocates make real strides in the opioid crisis when they have to fight against unethical practices in healthcare and bureaucracy in government? We’ll dive into this with State Attorney Dave Aronberg on this episode of Recovery Unscripted. For more about Recovery Unscripted, visit http://recoveryunscripted.org. For more about Dave's fight, visit https://www.fixthefloridashuffle.com.

The co-owner of a sober home is facing 24 felony and one misdemeanor counts.

LOXAHATCHEE GROVES — The owner of a Loxahatchee Groves horse farm that doubled as a sober home was arrested Friday and is facing more than two dozen counts related to patient brokering, according to an arrest report...

SAN FRANCISCO — It has been dubbed "the Florida Shuffle." Drug addicts from across the country get lured to the Sunshine State for decades with the promise of treatment, only to be traded from one unscrupulous drug rehab to another. Meanwhile, the patient's insurance company gets milked for tens of thousands of dollars in fraudulent charges...

Timothy Schnellenberger and his wife face two dozen counts. They say they received ‘incorrect legal advice.’

WEST PALM BEACH — The son and daughter-in-law of former FAU and University of Miami coach Howard Schnellenberger are facing two dozen counts of patient brokering, according to documents obtained by The Palm Beach Post...

BOYNTON BEACH — A man who with his wife operated a drug-treatment center and sober homes in Boynton Beach has been charged with filing more than $70,000 in fraudulent insurance claims, according to reports...

A serious issue that is affecting millions in our country and community is the opioid crisis. Hosts, Cynthia Heathcoe & Nicole Rymer are fortunate to talk to Palm Beach State Attorney, Dave Aronberg this week about the epidemic...

A paper offers advice to places across the U.S. just now experiencing the problem Palm Beach County has faced for years.
Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg and his office still get calls from other jurisdictions asking for advice. Last week, it was South Carolina. Earlier this year, he and others went to California to help draft legislation. Recently, they went to Washington, D.C., to testify before Congress. It's what happens when your county has been the epicenter for the opioid epidemic and you've had a few years to test and develop best practices...

As if people addicted to opioids don’t have enough trouble, shady operators have found a way to exploit them. Across the country, these “patient brokers” troll streets, drug courts and anywhere they might find people with addiction problems to lure them to treatment centers and “sober living homes” — usually illicit ones — in exchange for kickbacks. Internet and TV ads often promote the illegitimate facilities. And some phone hotlines, while offering to connect callers to legitimate treatment, instead collect referrals for facilities, selling them to the highest bidder...

ARLINGTON, Virginia – The National District Attorneys Association’s (NDAA) Opioid Working Group, comprised of 33 prosecutors from 30 states, published its Opioid Epidemic White Paper this week. After eight months of collaboration, the final product reflects the diverse views of prosecutors representing unique jurisdictions across the country...

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (CBS12) — The Palm Beach County Medical Examiner’s Office released new numbers Tuesday showing a 40 percent reduction in the number of opioid overdose deaths in the first nine months of 2018. The State Attorney for Palm Beach County Dave Aronberg credits multiple reasons for the reduced numbers, namely the availability of Narcan and the crackdown on sober homes...

A man stands accused of first-degree murder after a deadly drug deal, marking a first in Palm Beach County under a new Florida law. Calvin Warren Jr. has been indicted on the murder charge after Thomas Matuseski overdosed from the fentanyl Warren provided, Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg said in a news release Friday...

WASHINGTON - Marco Rubio isn’t a big fan of the U.S. Senate’s often slow-moving ways, but he managed to get a bill passed in less than six months that allows the federal government to crack down on non-reputable drug recovery homes...

"In the annals of 60 Minutes, we have rarely come across a doctor like Florida physician Barry Schultz. Prosecutors say he wantonly prescribed and sold massive quantities of highly addictive opioids. In July, Schultz was sentenced to 157 years for his role in fueling the most devastating public health crisis of the 21 century. Last year more Americans died of drug overdoses than in the entire Vietnam War. While Schultz ended up in jail, Mallinckrodt, the pharmaceutical company that flooded Florida with hundreds of millions of oxycodone pills, paid a relatively small penalty. The question now being debated in Congress and in federal court is: who is responsible for the opioid epidemic? The doctors who prescribed the pills or the opioid manufacturers and distributors who supplied them?" ....

Amid partisan fighting over the future of the Supreme Court, Republicans and Democrats united to pass legislation Friday that supporters say will help put unscrupulous drug treatment providers out of business in South Florida and lower the region’s opioid death toll...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A day after California took its first firm legislative steps to reign in an out-of-control addiction treatment industry – and three days after prosecutors in Orange County 1 Comment – Congress took on the next piece of the puzzle:

How to reconcile laws that protect the disabled with the need to ensure that sober living homes aren’t dangerous flophouses? ...

A Florida catastrophe — the opioid crisis — makes the 51st season premiere of “60 Minutes” this weekend.
The news magazine asks: Who is more responsible, doctors like Barry Schultz, or the manufacturers and distributors who supply huge amounts of the addictive drugs? ...

Pain clinic pioneer Barry Schultz, now sentenced by a Florida judge to 157 years in prison for drug trafficking, says he is a scapegoat. The mother of his patient who died of an overdose after Schultz prescribed him hundreds of opioid pills calls him a murderer. Bill Whitaker continues to investigate the origins of the opioid epidemic on the 51st Season Premiere of 60 Minutes, Sunday, Sept. 30 at 7:30 p.m. ET and 7 p.m. PT on CBS....

State Attorney Dave Aronberg has accepted an invitation to testify on fraud and abuse in the sober home industry before the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice. Aronberg, who leads a Sober Homes Task Force that has made 54 arrests for patient brokering and insurance fraud since October 2016, will provide a five-minute opening statement, followed by questions and answers. Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) extended the invitation for Aronberg to testify before the subcommittee, which includes local Congressman Ted Deutch (D-FL)...

DELRAY BEACH — For the third time in 16 months, a Boca Raton man has been arrested on charges of patient brokering. David Remland, 54, is accused of paying kickbacks so that urine tests at a substance-abuse treatment facility based in New Hampshire would be directed to his Delray Beach lab, according to an arrest report...

Most legislation aimed at cleaning up California’s dysfunctional addiction treatment industry slammed into brick walls, withered in suspense files or was watered down so much as to be unrecognizable – again...

WEST PALM BEACH, Florida, August 24, 2018 - Targeting fraud and abuse in the drug treatment and sober home industries, Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg announced today that he has launched a website, www.FixTheFloridaShuffle.com, to convince federal policymakers to change the laws that have unwittingly led to thousands of opioid-related deaths throughout the country...

As President Donald Trump’s trade war with China continues to escalate, there is a more urgent issue with China that remains overlooked: the continued illegal importation into the United States of the deadly synthetic opioid, fentanyl...

As the opioid epidemic continues to rage across the United States, the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office is embracing two new local statistics as evidence that their efforts to curb the county’s crisis are working...

Thanks to the opioid epidemic, more Americans die from overdoses every year than in car accidents, and the federal government is scrambling to try to get in front of the crisis. The House just passed and sent to the Senate a sweeping, bipartisan package of legislation backed by dozens of advocacy groups...

In 2011, a national heroin epidemic was the equivalent of dry tinder, lacking only a match. Florida lit it up. Purdue Pharma and El Chapo had provided kindling: The pharma company’s unprecedented marketing campaign for its blockbuster OxyContin painkiller did not stop with pill sales. Purdue marketing helped ensure that for the first time in U.S. history, heavy doses of one of the most addictive substances known to man would be prescribed by family doctors for everything from sprained ankles to migraines...

When the boss calls you into his office, it’s always a big deal. And so it was in the fall of 2001, when I was a 30-year-old assistant attorney general in the economic crime division. The boss — Attorney General Bob Butterworth — handed me a magazine article about people with sports and workplace injuries who became addicted to a new painkiller, OxyContin, manufactured by Purdue Pharma. Butterworth was concerned that Purdue Pharma was marketing OxyContin deceptively and too aggressively, leading to overprescribing, addiction and, in many cases, death...

Two men connected to a Delray Beach-area lab linked to kickbacks for urine tests for people in treatment and recovery for substance abusehave been arrested, a day after three men also were charged in the scheme...

"Sober living homes," or "recovery residences" as they are also known, are group homes that bring together multiple unrelated individuals who are in drug recovery and pursuing sobriety. What could possibly be harmful about such places of healing, hope and support? Nothing, in the case of the many responsible residence owners who mean to help the homes' inhabitants...

Florida is the nation’s second most popular destination for for-profit drug detox, and Palm Beach County is the state’s leader in that respect. As of April 1, it was home to 185 of Florida’s 771 licensed drug treatment facilities. As impressive as those numbers are, each total has shrunk markedly from just eight months ago, when the county had 207 of the state’s 953 facilities. The sudden downsizing reflects, at least in part, the shutdown and flight of bad actors in the face of a crackdown on fraud by the Palm Beach State Attorney’s Office, which has made 45 industry arrests in the last year and a half, obtaining 16 convictions so far...

After a temporary hiatus, Google has reopened the sale of AdWords in the addiction treatment market under a new policy. The policy requires a 12-measure certification process for advertisers, and some of the finer details will emerge as the standards are put into everyday practice...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google told Reuters Monday it would resume accepting ads from U.S. addiction treatment centers in July, nearly a year after the Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) unit suspended the lucrative category of advertisers for numerous deceptive and misleading ads...

State Attorney Dave Aronberg says there are now 14 opioid related deaths a day in Florida today. He says that's reason enough to stand beside the county in its legal battle against a slew of pharmaceutical companies with opioid addiction holding strong, Palm Beach County filed a lawsuit against several pharmaceutical companies, alleging they prioritize profits over people's lives...

Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas recently created a task force to handle abuses in the anti-addiction industry in the “Rehab Riviera.” Rackauckas is hoping to repeat the success of Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg, who created a similar task force two years ago. Since then, Palm Beach officials have made 44 rehab-industry related arrests...

As our country faces an unprecedented opioid epidemic that takes at least 115 lives each day, you may have noticed a new neighbor on your block. Without fanfare or neighborhood notification, the house next door may now be a “sober home” or “recovery residence,” where multiple unrelated individuals in drug recovery live together in pursuit of sobriety. There is no medical treatment inside these residences. They are just a communal living space where residents usually attend outpatient rehab at a nearby facility. The best of these homes are the ones you never even notice are amongst you. The worst degenerate into flophouses, where unscrupulous landlords exploit people with substance use disorder for money or sex, and encourage relapse over recovery...

ORANGE, CA (MARCH 14, 2018) – The Association of California Cities– Orange County (ACC-OC)— the region’s leading public policy, strategy, education and advocacy group— announces a collaborative engagement visit with Florida State Attorney, Dave Aronberg on the complex issue of sober living reform. On March 20, 2018; Aronberg, a prominent national voice on sober living issues will visit Orange County to meet with officials and local leaders. Aronberg will participate in a roundtable discussion during his visit, addressing stakeholder concerns and answering questions on the necessity of sober living reform...

The deadliest drug crisis in American history won’t be solved by just researchers, law enforcement or recovery treatment providers. But put them all in the same room to brainstorm, as Florida Atlantic University did Wednesday, and the result is steps toward a multi-pronged approach to tackle addiction...

PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla. - This is the Ambrosia Treatment Center on Singer Island. Jerry Haffey with the treatment center said, "I hate seeing kids dying in closets because of scum bag providers." He's clearly passionate about helping people beat substance abuse. But Haffey knows treatment centers around here have a bad reputation. That's why he joined forces with State Attorney Dave Aronberg to lobby for money to fund the Sober Homes Task Force...

WASHINGTON — The congressional representatives sitting on the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations wanted to hear about patient brokering and sober home fraud. Tuesday morning, they got an earful from Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg and his chief assistant, Al Johnson...

As so often happens, a frantic mother called us about her 19-year-old daughter, who I’ll call Jen. A heroin addict, Jen had been shuttled between multiple treatment centers and sober homes by greedy marketers looking to cash in on the teenager’s insurance benefits by keeping her perpetually in recovery, but never sober. As our investigator searched Palm Beach County for Jen, her mother finally reached her by phone. She pleaded with her daughter to leave Florida, to which Jen replied, “Why would I come home? I have all I need here.” In the ensuing months, Jen has become a victim of a vicious cycle known as “the Florida shuffle.” She has continued in and out of treatment, repeatedly relapsed and overdosed, been on the brink of death, was revived and all the while trafficked by marketers offering free rent and other gifts — as she ignores her mother’s desperate pleas to come home...

In July 2016, our office established a task force into abuses in the drug treatment industry, including “sober homes.” Sober homes are group residences designed to help recovering drug and alcohol addicts, including those attending outpatient treatment programs, transition back into the community. Unlike drug treatment centers, sober homes are unregulated, which is why they are proliferating throughout our residential neighborhoods. Because there is no regulation or oversight, there is no accurate count of how many exist. Government officials who seek to regulate sober homes through local ordinances or zoning laws have been thwarted by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Fair Housing Act (FHA)...

Delray Beach's charming downtown, palm trees and waves attract locals, vacationers and, increasingly, drug users who come here to try to get off opioids. In some parts of the small Florida community, there's a residential program for people recovering from addiction — a sober living house or "sober home" — on nearly every block. Sometimes two or three...

Law enforcement has been cracking down on corruption in South Florida’s drug treatment industry. State and federal officials have arrested more than 30 people for running scams in rehab centers or sober homes in the past year...

State legislators came to Palm Beach County Tuesday to discuss the opioid crisis. County officials, first responders, treatment professionals and advocates offered up stories from the front lines and ideas for reducing overdoses and deaths...

PALM BEACH COUNTY, Florida — For the first responders who found her lifeless body one October morning, 24-year-old Alison Flory was yet another casualty of addiction here on the front line of Florida's opioid crisis...